If it is true that the elections of Sunday 14 May seem to be able to change the course of Thailand, one figure helps to understand in which direction it could go: out of 52 million voters, 3.3 million vote for the first time.

Young people are today the needle of the scale: they will probably decide the future of the second largest economy in Southeast Asia, a contemporary country of ancient traditions, pervaded by all the contradictions of modernity and globalization. With a complex and volatile political system, marked by an independent variable of great weight: the power of the military.

It is the same military, or their heirs, who in 2014 ended a long period of instability and protests with a coup that silenced democracy – formally returning control to the monarchy and essentially to the great economic powers. A few years later, in 2017, it was the military who drafted the new Constitution that is put to the test on Sunday. A Constitution that provides for free elections for the Chamber, but which reserves another 250 seats for the Senate - subtracted from the vote because all decided directly by the military themselves. After all, the military is not only an elite closely intertwined with economic levers, but one of the great social sectors that make up the country's variegated electoral body.

Schematically, we can identify five social bases that form the basis of the main political parties: the military, the royalist loyalists, the populists, the technocrats, the young and the very young.

It becomes easier to decipher who is vying for victory at the polls and why.
See.

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Prayut Chan-o-cha, candidate in the 2023 Thai parliamentary elections

Prayut's military

Prayuth Chan-o-cha and Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwon lead the conservative and monarchist front. Ptrayut, a retired army general, is a hard-line standard-bearer of traditionalism but has had to bend to many compromises, even to survive a series of investigations. The military has been criticized for its poor management of the economy and the pandemic, but its electoral base is always solid, as is its grip on the apparatuses of power and the state.

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Paetongtarn Shinawatra, candidate in the 2023 Thai parliamentary elections

The populists of the Shinawatra family

The candidate of the main opposition party, Pheu Thai, is called Paetongtarn Shinawatra and is the daughter of the more famous Thaksin Shinawatra: otherwise known as "the Thai Berlusconi", former prime minister and communications magnate, accused of corruption and for years in exile abroad. If her daughter, a new mother who has campaigned effectively on wage increases and the distribution of public aid, wins, Thaksin could enjoy a triumphant return to his homeland. Pheu Thai has its base mainly in rural Thailand, in the deep agricultural north, in small traders who demand less taxes and less bureaucracy.

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Pita Limjaroenrat, candidate in the 2023 Thai parliamentary elections

The young people of Move Forward

Young, technological, ambitious. Students, computer scientists, metropolitan creatives, all the people who crowd the cafes of Bangkok have no doubts: they vote for Move Forward, an ideologically liberal party that makes the dynamics of globalization its strength, insists on the need for political renewal and generational change, even questions the privileges of the monarchy - which is sacred in these parts. The charismatic leader of the party is called Pita Limjaroenrat and it is no coincidence that he has the "boyish face", as the Thais say. His growing popularity and irreverent tones greatly unnerved the conservative front.

What happens next

According to polls, the opposition has a clear lead – net of possible fraud and adding up both the votes of populists and those of young people and technocrats.
But whether the military wants to quietly hand over the reins of the country remains to be seen.

As already mentioned, there will be a vote for the House, but the government will also be elected by the 250 members of the Senate, controlled directly by the military. And even if this were not enough, if the opposition manages to get the 500 seats it needs to have a solid majority even against the weight of the Senate, the shadow of a new coup is always around the corner. In 2020, the last time the streets of Bangkok were flooded with protests, the military government cracked down on arrests and repression – and it doesn't mean it's not ready to do so again.